NGAHINA HOHAIA (Taranaki iwi, Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Moeahu, Ngāti Haupoto—Parihaka) and ANNA-MARIE WHITE (Manukorihi hapū, Te Ātiawa—Waitara) are whanaunga. Their ancestors actively resisted colonial land sales in Taranaki—which led to the outbreak of the New Zealand Land Wars with Crown forces at Waitara in 1860, and the wholesale confiscation of Taranaki Māori land in 1865—and were part of the Parihaka movement, which resisted confiscation and advocated the restoration of land to ensure Māori survival. The Parihaka community was invaded and dismantled by colonial troops in 1881, though Parihakatanga was maintained by whānau at the Parihaka papa kāinga and throughout Taranaki, including Owae marae at Waitara.
Ngahina spoke to Anna-Marie about He Ara Uru Ora (2023), which was commissioned by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and is currently presented as part of Te Hau Whakatonu | A Series of Never-Ending Beginnings, until 11 February 2024.
ANNA-MARIE WHITE
The title of this work is drawn from a karakia.
NGAHINA HOHAIA
Yes, an ancient Taranaki karakia that affirms wellbeing and the regeneration of life, and relates the life force in ourselves to every part of the natural world, seen and unseen. In essence this karakia expresses our understanding of our place in the cosmos. And this is how I see He Ara Uru Ora, as an affirmation.
We’ve talked about the raukura as a peaceful affirmation because we need something to cling to, especially when the rage and despair is overwhelming.
Our Parihaka tūpuna made reference to the raukura as a source of healing—he rau rengarenga. But I think that because of the way non-Māori have tended to write about Parihaka, the narrative of peace has been hyper-romanticised in a way that undermines what the pursuit of peace actively requires, to achieve peace that’s just and restorative. So I’m mindful of how meaning can be redefined when language transposes across one cultural paradigm to another. I think Te Whiti o Rongomai’s words illustrate the affirmation you’re talking about. “He puawai au nō runga i te tikanga, he rau rengarenga nō roto i te raukura, ko taku raukura rā he manawanui ki te āo.” “I am the fruition of righteous procedure, a herb of healing from this sacred emblem the raukura, and my sacred emblem is an assurance to the world.”
So if we reframe the concept of your work from ‘affirmation’ to ‘articulation’, He Ara Uru Ora is a manifestation—or a physical articulation—of the tools for survival left to us by our tūpuna. But this work is also in kōrero with our tūpuna and speaks to our current situation.
Āe, I couldn’t bring myself to make another work at this time—not to say that I won’t again—about the lived burden of our collective colonial trauma. Like this work here, Roimata Toroa (2006), is—
—An archive of trauma.
Yes. The visual language of that work speaks to the layers of trauma and colonial violence quite strongly. But in the creation of He Ara Uru Ora, I wanted to centre the healing power that our tūpuna have passed on to us. I didn’t want to dedicate this work to the burden of our collective trauma, when we know the weight of it and what it is to carry that burden every single day. We don’t need another reminder. We need to remember our inherent abilities, our innate capacity to heal and restore ourselves.
We are educators of that trauma, too, which has been a life-determining role for us, but our situation is changing.
I think so, milestones are occuring, milestones that keep New Zealand society on a path towards change, willing or not.[01] He Ara Uru Ora is still addressing muru raupatu, but from a different perspective, from a position of regeneration.
You have made an affirmation or sentiment for us to hold on to.
I hope so. Muru raupatu is most often used in reference to the land confiscations, when in fact the taking of our lands has been the dismantling of life, the muru and the raupatu of our knowledge systems, our visual languages, our relationship to the taiao and to each other, everything. So He Ara Uru Ora conveys concepts of regeneration that have always been with us—in our DNA, part of our whakapapa—the elements of wai, Tāwhirimātea, Tāne Mahuta, Tangaroa, and all of the atua elements, since before and beyond the muru raupatu, our connection to the taiao as our source of power.
As you are talking to me, I’m seeing this image of He Ara Uru Ora begin to move, energy is moving through the aho, vertical threads, it is not cascading, it is moving in all directions, and I can see that you are positioning yourself currently within a continuum of time. But if we use the symbolism of a waterfall and think about ourselves as droplets of water, we are somewhere, nowhere, all of the places, all at once—absolute.
Multiple languages are converging in this work—sound, physical material and directional movement. It operates like a spinal tract, a central nervous system, ascending and descending pathways of communication. Mauri is moving through the work, like music, or what is described as melodic motion—there are multiple melodies that are moving in opposite directions to each other simultaneously.
During the making process, as I was pulling down the threads of the concept into the work, the relevance of water continued to repeat—of course, the waters of our Tūpuna Maunga are our unceasing source of power, the pinnacle, and symbolise the continuation of our whakapapa, regeneration, and our connection to place. So I wanted to create a channel like a Pou Atua, a divine body of pathways moving in all directions, because there are three concentric circles of suspended aho, 150 in total, so the mauri is ascending, descending and radiating out.
Our leaders went to water pools and waterfalls on the Maunga to meditate on tough issues and seek guidance in these places, and you have created a similar environment here; I noticed that people spend a lot of time in contemplation with your work at the gallery. While we can see He Ara Uru Ora as a waterfall, the toroa point to something else.
I intentionally identified the material as huruhuru toroa—albatross feathers, the component parts of the raukura of Parihaka—but not as the raukura. So people will have to do some thinking if they want to relate this to the narrative of Parihaka.
In terms of toroa as a manu, the symbolism of manu is deeply embedded in our ancient Taranaki oratory. Many of our old karakia are characterised by manu as divine intermediaries and describe the various attributes of manu. So when I was working on He Ara Uru Ora, I was thinking about the personification of toroa as spiritual messengers and as symbols of immense resilience. Toroa can live at sea, without touching land, for up to two years. They have an innate inbuilt compass, which enables them to orient themselves in the middle of nowhere, to be able to return to their homelands, their breeding grounds, to continue their whakapapa.
So toroa symbolise the ability to set our own course, seize power over our own destiny and navigate our future. Toroa also have the incredible ability to take in ocean water as sustenance by expelling the salt through the glands above their eyes as roimata, tears, and Roimata Toroa refers to that process as an analogy for what we have had to do.
So He Ara Uru Ora is a waterfall of feathers carrying divine communication.
It is also a tree, a tree of feathers. The karakia that the title of this work is drawn from refers to ‘He uru ora’, which is a grove of tall trees that prosper in collective strength, that support and nurture one another and allow for new growth to flourish. That’s ‘He uru ora’, a grove of wellbeing. So in this work, each aho can be likened to the root system of a giant tree.
You have also referenced puhi rere?
Puhi rere are feather trains attached to the taurapa of a waka taua that dip into the water and trail behind the waka. They connect with the celestial realm and act as a conduit line that the atua and tūpuna move through as the waka is travelling. In any case, puhi rere reinforce the relationship between us and our tūpuna and atua—our need to be engaged with them, our ability to access them and a means by which they access us.
You have harnessed multiple divinity devices here, which account for the power of He Ara Uru Ora, it is a very powerful work that affects all of the senses.
I feel compelled to create works that bring elements together and communicate with all the senses at once—the point where sound, space, form, light and sight converge—I think it’s a naturally Māori way of understanding and communicating. We shape space and speak into space that is non-linear, and that’s where I locate my practice, within a continuum of resistance, restoration and renewal.
Over the years, there’s been a tendency among curators and institutions to pigeonhole my practice as a telling of history—“It’s about the story of Parihaka,” “It’s about Te Whiti and Tohu and the three white feathers of peace”—which locates my work in the past. It becomes tiresome to have to constantly claw back the narrative. As Indigenous people who’ve endured colonisation, we know that history cannot be relegated to the past when the process of colonisation is active and ongoing. Colonialism hasn’t ended, it just looks like other things. It looks like capitalism. It looks like climate crisis. It looks like structural and institutional racism, like poverty and homelessness. So, yes, my work operates in a continuum of resistance and restoration, and it is important that I maintain my self-determining voice—the sovereignty of self-definition within that continuum. I won’t allow others to consign my practice to an exercise in historiography.
The theme of resilience, as opposed to resistance, is beginning to emerge in Taranaki, and that may be the word we need, given that we are meant to be reconciled and settled, even though we may not feel that way. Certainly, the glory and the majesty of this work is a testament to our collective need to cling on to something—just as our tūpuna took up the raukura— to be able to reconcile grievous emotions about the reality of our current situation, knowing that we are actually meant to be getting on with it or getting over it, and I don’t think we know how to do that yet. We may not be able to sort ourselves out, that may not happen in our lifetime. So, at this moment, when we should be grateful—and we are grateful for the hardships, determination and perseverance of our tūpuna to get us to this current situation; as Mahara [Okeroa] always says, “in spite of, in spite of ”—we’re alive and we’re here, but it’s really hard to snap out of it.
In spite of, yes indeed! A few years ago, Yuki Kihara made a post that posed the question, “What work will Māori artists be making post-Treaty settlement? How will it be different?” I was unsure what that meant exactly, because the process of recovering and restoring ourselves from colonial violence is an ongoing intergenerational task, and reconciliation requires the coloniser to relinquish power. So while the Treaty-settlement era is a milestone in that process, I think that we’ll continue to address colonisation in the many ways that we do for as long as we have to: as long as we experience racism in our own whenua there will always be the need to create in ways that disrupt the colonial narrative.
You told me that you envisioned this work many years ago, and are frustrated that it’s taken so long to manifest. But maybe this is the right time, maybe this is the right work, the right articulation for our post-settlement era.
The frustration is about trying to access and mobilise sufficient resource and support to make work that matters to me as an artist, as a Māori woman who is a daughter of Parihaka. The barriers to resources can be deeply frustrating and disheartening. So it’s been a really satisfying process to bring this work to reality with the support of the Govett-Brewster and curator Taarati Taiaroa.
Header image: Ngahina Hohaia, He Ara Uru Ora (detail), 2023, huruhuru Toroa, silk, cord, moving-image and sound. Installation view, Te Hau Whakatonu, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth, 2023. Photo: Sam Hartnett
[01] See Te Pire Haeata ki Parihaka | Parihaka Reconciliation Bill 2017 and Te Ruruku Pūtakerongo | Collective Redress Deed 2023, which settled the Treaty claims of the eight iwi of Taranaki in respect of Te Kāhui Tupua (Taranaki Maunga and other Tūpuna Maunga).
Te Hau Whakatonu | A Series of Never-Ending Beginnings, 5 August–11 February 2024, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth
In partnership with Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
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